I keep pretty much to myself while on the computer, DU, couple of other sites, e-mail. Now and then a letter.

Pretty simple. I lead a simple life.

Why didn't you guys warn me. Yipes, while doing a genealogy search via "the Google", up pops a screen: "Threat Detected". Obviously I closed out of everything and started AVG.

What happened for me was an eye-opener. Just got this gizmo back from the repair guru and can relay this to those of you who are an inexperienced as I am.

First of all, this whole affair running AVG took 2 1/2 hours.

Flashing blue screen, then-and constant flashing "this page cannot be displayed(orange window indicator tells me it has opened 56 windows but the number goes up and down. Big strip right up the middle of the screen saying repeatedly "Internet Explorer", rolling bottom to top like an old movie. Then I hear music and voices coming from the tower, not constant but intermittent. At the later part of the AVG run, up pops the blue screen again. How am I ever going to complete this? Blue screen finally went away and I could see the Box with scan results.

7 Trojan Horses and all their men in my computer.Hit heal, quarantine or whatever the word was and off 6 of them go to the virus vault. Left me with the message that one could be removed. Called computer Guru and he picked it up to do his magic.

You all know what was next, 3 days no computer. Now it is back and I hope all is well.

This was not fun. The computer Guru said to leave just AVG and nothing else on the computer. He had to clean up a lot of stuff: virus's and spyware and do registry things. I have know idea and it is all beyond me except to say that I hope this never happens again.

a few years back I did poke around a few sites and they seem to be rife with all sorts of pitfalls and scams. You just can't trust anyone on the net. It seems some of the geneaology websites are using the same hijacking techniques pioneered by the old porn sites.

If you are using Firefox, get the NoScript extension. Look in Tools > Add Ons - and you will be taken to the Firefox add ons page. Search for NoScript and follow the instructions to install it, then re-start Firefox.

It takes a little getting used to and at first you will not see many page elements that require scripts (Java etc) but you can create a 'white list' by clicking on the NoScript icon in the bottom right hand corner and allowing the page if it is trusted. It's amazing to see how many things are loading on some web sites.

1. Boot up in safe mode-that keeps it from getting online while trying to clean it up.Run your antivirus, then antispyware-I recommend Spybot Search & Destroy and Malwarebytes antimalware.Turn OFF System Restore-otherwise the infections will come back. Fucking windows acts like a virus at that point.Reboot in normal mode, run scans again with same apps. If clean on all counts, then turn on System Restore and reboot again.I've been known to pull the drive on an infected system, hook it up as a secondary drive on another computer and run a scan from the OS on the main drive onto the secondary drive

One handy little tool for browsing around is the NoScript extension for Firefox. Like Canetoad, I've found a large number of genealogy sites with scams and various javascript applets that do bad things. I wouldn't have imagined genealogy sites being the source of so much of this, but I thought about it and realized that pretty much every older member of my family plays with genealogy and goes to these places. As a group, they (meaning my family members) know very little about computers, much less safe browsing habits. They are prone to clicking "OK" whenever they are presented with a dialog box and as a result have constant problems of this sort.

The bottom line is that no malware or virus protection software is going keep you safe. One has to adopt certain habits. Preventing javascript from running except on those sites you elect to allow it to run is one good habit to learn. Of course even this isn't foolproof. So many sites require javascript that one is prone to turning it on to try to get the content they are after, and you generally have no way of knowing just on a glance if it is safe to do so. But, with experience, you can lower your odds, e.g. you'll learn by using NoScript that some sites have a dozen or more different sources of javascript embedded on their pages and that allowing the main domain is usually safe while keeping those other domains turned off prevents a lot of the weirdness out. The most you tend to lose by not allowing all javascript all the time is advertisements and video streams, but, again, you can allow that selectively, temporarily.

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